Friday, October 5, 2007

Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp

This book absolutely haunted me up until a few years ago. Once on a family visit to Nantucket when I was a girl, I spotted this book in a bookstore and had been enchanted by it. I only read it once, and we didn't buy it, and I never saw it again, but the story stayed with me. More than ten years ago now, I Dogpiled (ha! remember those days before Google!?!) the words swamp/little girl/swamp monster/book and was reunited with the pictures that had so long ago influenced me.

It was funny, too, that it would be by Mercer Mayer since I probably had every Little Critter book known to man at the time.

Yeller belly cottonmouth,Possum up a tree,You can catch the swamp feverBut you can't catch me.

I suppose being from the south and actually living nearby to real swamps made this book come alive all the more... the evil ghost of a Confederate soldier, the swamp witch, cotton mouths, and how the brilliant little girl outsmarts them all. She even sticks it to the devil himself!

I guess since I had my own swamp monsters of the imagination, it was gratifying to see a female kicking butt on the creepy crawlies of the dark. I have to give this book 80 thumbs up... plus my son gets a huge kick out of it which is all the more awesome.

My favorite book when I was growing up. She was a little girl who looked like me & wasn't scared of anything. I just found an original edition on eBay & bought it so my little girl (due 12/12) will be able to read her too. It's exactly the same book that I used to have when I was a kid.

I had the same reaction recently--couldn't remember the name, but remembered the rich drawings, particularly the first one you posted. Imagine my pleasure when I finally tracked it down on Amazon and opened the book to find the pictures were even better than I remembered. And this time around I picked up that the swamp haunt is a confederate solider, and I finally know why a devil would want a parson's soul (never quite understood that as a kid.) Since it came in the mail, my 4 year old has asked me to read it to her EVERY DAY, and she sits and flips through it like I used too. We also had a great discussion about race, as my daughter commented on the color of Liza Lou's skin. Seriously, this is one of the best children's books ever, I can't think why it's not on every top list of must-have books for kids.